Summer Infant Potty – The fun potty seat with all the bells and whistles that toddlers love.
Baby Bjorn Potty – I recommend two potty seats: one for the bathroom (if you don’t want to try using an actual toilet right away) and one for the room where your toddler hangs out most (family room, play room, etc). This seat was also good to bring to daycare in the early stages.
Oh Crap Potty Training Book – This is the method we used and it worked well for us!
Baby Bjorn Potty Seat – We used this to help introduce Aidan to the big toilet.
OXO Travel Potty Seat – If you ever want to leave the house again after you start potty training, get this seat!
Toddler Undies – I suggest getting some that reflect your kid’s interests. I got Aidan cars, monster trucks, and trains.
Step Stools – We have one for each bathroom.
Potty Board Book – Good reading material for when your kid is sitting on the potty.
Faucet Extender – SO HELPFUL so Aidan can reach the water from the sink.
Pee Pad for Carseat – Cleaning out carseats is the worst. Definitely save yourself the trouble and get one of these.
Oh, potty training. I think I’ve been dreading this part of Aidan’s life since the day he was born! We started potty training Aidan a week before his second birthday (January 6) and I used the method from the book Oh Crap! Potty Training! It’s been about 9 months since we started, and while Aidan is not fully potty trained yet (still need to do night training), I’m happy to say he is doing well. I’ve learned a lot about potty training in the last year, so I wanted to share some tips and favorite potty products to help make the process a little easier for my fellow mamas:
Introduce the concept before your start date
Something we did that helped Aidan grasp the concept of potty training pretty quickly was we started reading him potty books around 20 months old. Around this time, we also started going to the bathroom in front of Aidan to help normalize the process, so by the time we started potty training, it wasn’t that foreign to him.
Mom needs to be ready, too
Yes, your kid should be showing some signs of readiness before you start potty training, but mom needs to be ready, too. What I mean by that is, are you mentally and emotionally ready for your baby to become a big kid? When you potty train your kid, you’re going to be applauding them a lot for using the potty like a “big kid” and wearing “big kid undies,” so you can’t be calling them a big kid one minute and calling them “your little baby” the next unless you want to confuse them. I originally wanted to potty train Aidan around 22 months, but decided to wait until he was officially two years old because I wanted to soak up a few more months of calling him my baby.
Take a week off of work if you can
The book I read recommended taking at least 4 days off work because the longer your child has to work on potty training at home with their parents, the more successful he/she will be. Lucky for me, my office was closed on new years eve and new years day, and since those were days leading up to Aidan’s second birthday, I just decided to take the entire week of new years off to work on potty training with him. We ended up having 8 full days to work on potty training and I think that’s why he was able to get it down pretty well.
Take care of yourself those first few days/weeks of potty training
That first week of potty training was pretty stressful and kind of an emotional rollercoaster; one day he’d be getting it down and the next he’d have a ton of accidents. It was also exhausting. Not only do you have to watch your kid like a hawk, but you and your kid are both experiencing a big change in your routines and learning something new. After your kid’s bedtime, practice some self-care like taking a bubble bath to help de-stress or going to bed early to catch up on sleep.
Keep in mind that it’s a process
Something that really annoyed me once we started potty training was that it’s not something that can be done in three days like a lot of books and parenting websites make it seem. POTTY TRAINING IS A PROCESS. There’s so much you have to teach them aside from where to put their waste, like how to wipe, hand washing, transitioning from a mini potty to an actual potty, public restrooms, NIGHT TRAINING, etc. No one is going to be able to fully potty train their kid in three days, especially if you’re a working parent. So keep that in mind that and keep your expectations level.
Potty training is definitely one of the hardest things I’ve done as a parent so far. But it’s also been rewarding. Overall, Aidan has been relatively easy to potty train. He grasped the concept right away; it was just getting him used to a big change in his routine that was a bit of a struggle. But now it’s his new normal and he loves being an independent “big boy.”
Do you have any good potty training tips? What was your child’s potty training experience like?
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